Season review. Part 7

For example, on 11 November the Western Mail published a story, carrying quotes by David Temme, that American cash and carry giant warehouse Costco would be the anchor tenant at the retail development that would finance the new ground scheme, the piece also claimed “ Discount clothes operator Matalan, which already has a store in Newport Road, has also signed up for the Leckwith scheme.”, whilst Temme was quoted as saying “I'm delighted that Costco will be coming into Cardiff.

It will be a fantastic anchor tenant because of the other companies that are also being attracted to the retail park” All of this seemed great news, however the “but” arrived later in the piece when Temme said “I cannot see any reason why the athletics stadium cannot start within a couple of months. It would be good to make a start on St David's Day." - so there it was, another delay! After telling all and sundry at the meeting after Earnie was sold that work would start on the new ground in January at the latest the start date was now March 1 and subsequent events have shown even this start date to be wildly optimistic! As far as so called good news stories about the ground are concerned, I have now come to the conclusion that, unless they carry quotes from the Council or the developers, they are invariably spin from the club where they are trying to hide more bad news amid a load of bullsh*t (and they seem to expect all supporters to fall for it every time!)!

Going back to that meeting, a second of the pledges made that night (ie money from Earnie’s transfer will be spent on new players) had long since been disproved to the extent that nobody at the club was even trying to keep up the charade any more! I think it is fair to say that supporters no longer expected the promised big money signings and accepted that any new arrivals would be either more loan players or, maybe, the odd free transfer.

The perceived wisdom amongst many supporters was that the extent of the club’s financial problems meant that Danny Gabbidon would inevitably be sold when the transfer window reopened in January. Lennie Lawrence was having none of this though proclaiming that Gabbidon was different to Earnie - he was the player he wanted to build the team around in coming seasons and , to that end, he stated that Gabbidon had been offered the best deal the club had ever put to one of its players. I for one, was very cynical about this claim, but lo and behold, Gabbidon did sign a contract extension in October which meant that he was contracted to the club until 2008. The “but” in this story though was, assuming it is true that Gabbidon’s new deal was “ the most lucrative contract this club has ever offered a player in its history." (to quote Lennie Lawrence), it is hard to reconcile this with the fact that come December the wages had to be paid by Director Michael Isaac (the club didn’t have the funds to pay them)! Now I would love Danny Gabbidon to see out the rest of his playing days with the City, but not at the cost of bankrupting the club - at times you really got the impression that the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing at Ninian Park!

Back to on field matters, City travelled to Loftus Road to face a QPR side whose season was mirroring ours after we had been promoted by beating them in that Play Off Final. They were generally expected to struggle at this level, but, instead, were right in the thick of the promotion battle (although a 6-1 thrashing in their last game at Leeds suggested, correctly as it turned out, that they would not be able to sustain their good form).

Given what had happened on 25 May 2003, this was always going to be something of a grudge match and City’s response to the challenge was to come up with a performance that many of those unfortunate enough to have witnessed it rated as their worst of the season! QPR weren’t much better and it was fitting that such a poor quality game was won by a messy goal which arrived when a corner (we had started conceding goals from set pieces again) dropped to home centre back Danny Shittu who given time to fall down and get back up again before drilling his shot past Warner from around the penalty spot.

City offered very little going forward with the central midfield pairing of Bullock and Boland (who was apparently arguing with disgruntled City fans before the corner from which the goal was scored!) again making no impact. The one piece of good news on a miserable Saturday lunchtime (yes, it was yet another of those rearranged kick off time games because the Cardiff “hooligans” were in town!) was the return of Peter Thorne from injury - the magic hat man came off the bench around the hour mark and came as close as anyone did to scoring with a 35 yard effort that flew narrowly over the bar.

Typically for City at this time, some good news was always accompanied by some bad and Thorne’s return was balanced by the news that Alan Lee would be out for a while with a hernia problem. Lee had looked sluggish and out of sorts for a few weeks and, apparently, had come very close to being sent off at QPR as frustration got the better of him and this news seemed to, apparently, explain the lethargic nature of his recent displays (he had been carrying the injury for a couple of months).

Lee’s absence combined with an injury to Andy Campbell and the fact that , after early successes, Paul Parry was making less of an impact in his new central striking role meant that City were short of options up front and Lennie Lawrence reacted by bringing Millwall’s joint record scorer Neil Harris on loan. Harris had, apparently, fallen out with Dennis Wise (must be a hard thing to do!) and was not going to be offered a new deal when his contract ran out in the summer so there was the chance of the signing becoming a permanent one if the player did the business for us.

Although Harris had been a very effective substitute against us at the New Den in October the goal he scored that day was his only one of the season so far and he had barely played in the last month so it was an untried front pairing of Thorne and Jerome that started the absolutely critical home match with Gillingham. The failure of the Boland/Bullock combination was acknowledged when the latter was left out and Joe Ledley was moved in field to partner our longest serving player - Paul Parry dropped back to fill Ledley’s position on the left.

Although City were in a wretched run with four successive defeats in all competitions, there probably wasn‘t a better time to be facing Gillingham who had relieved Andy Hessenthaller of his managerial duties and arrived at Ninian Park being managed by a committee which included Chairman Paul Scally, youth coach Darren Hare and, apparently, the tea lady!

Gillingham were one of an exclusive three team club (tellingly, the other members were Rotherham and Forest) who were actually below us in the table and so the importance of the match could not be over estimated. In the event, City were convincing winners but (that word again!) not before they had gone through a five minute horror show which had illustrated how fragile the belief and confidence was amongst the players at that time.

City got off to a great start after 13 minutes when Cameron Jerome, who was making his first start for us, turned a defender beautifully and fired home. The pass that gave Jerome his chance came from Willie Boland who looked so much more comfortable with Ledley alongside him as the City bossed the game in midfield. In truth, Gillingham were all over the shop at the back and a further City goal never seemed far away but then around the half hour mark the team (particularly the defence) stopped playing for some reason as the visitors took total control. A good save by Tony Warner was only delaying the inevitable as City conceded from another corner which James Collins headed on to his own post - for a while it appeared as if the danger had passed bit the ball was worked to veteran Tommy Johnson whose deflected shot flew in.

It almost got worse for City shortly after when Warner again had to save well, but then ,just as suddenly as they had lost it, City reasserted their authority. That said, it needed a highly debatable penalty decision to restore our lead after 41 minutes as Jerome appeared to handle before being blocked by Nosworthy - even if there wasn‘t a handball by the City player, it didn’t look like a foul to me. Without the suspended Kav and the injured Lee and Langley, I didn’t have a clue as to who would take the penalty, but Peter Thorne stepped forward to confidently beat Bossu from the spot and at the same time have me thinking why on earth didn’t he take the one that Campbell missed at the same end against Leeds a couple of months earlier!

After that, there was going to come out on top as the only mystery was why the winning margin was not greater. Peter Thorne scored ten minutes after the break when McAnuff’s cross was deflected to him about ten yards out and he missed two great chances to complete a hat trick after that as City created chance after chance against a team who I reckoned were the worst to visit Ninian Park so far during the campaign.

Neil Harris got on to make his debut and almost marked it with a goal, but, rather than two goal Peter Thorne, it was the player Harris replaced who claimed the headlines. Cameron Jerome ran Ashby and Hope the visiting centre backs ragged in a very impressive full debut and, as the season went on, better centre backs than the Gillingham pair would have to endure very uncomfortable matches up against the young striker as he made a major impact in our relegation struggle

The team’s next match was at home to Sunderland which presented a problem because it meant that Darren Williams would not be able to play against the team he was on loan from. Williams, whose three month loan deal was coming to an end soon and could not be further extended, had done a good, solid job at right back since making his debut at Wolves and, with there being talk of Rhys Weston being farmed out on loan somewhere shortly, he had, seemingly, established himself as the club’s first choice right back.

City were keen to make the move a permanent one and, after some hesitation, Williams duly signed the day before the game. There was no fee involved in the transfer and this was also the case with Toni Koskela a Finnish Under 21 International midfield player who had been on trial with us for a month. When City also offered a deal to Neil Harris shortly afterwards, they were on the brink of signing three players within a week (perhaps this was what Sam Hammam meant at that meeting after Earnie’s sale!), but the length of contract offered told everything about our financial situation. In each case, the deal offered was only until the end of the season (this was the cause of Darren Williams hesitation in putting pen to paper). To be fair to the City, if things were as bad financially as they seemed, you couldn’t really blame them for any short deals being offered, but you couldn’t help thinking that this sort of thing would never have happened in the spend, spend, spend early days of Sam Hammam’s time with us. Back in those days the players would probably have been offered at least an eighteen month deal, but we had overspent massively when there was no need to (I.e. when we were in the bottom basement) and now we were in the thick of a relegation battle at a far higher level, we were paying the penalty for being hamstrung financially.

Graham Kavanagh had completed his suspension for his sending off at Reading and so what had looked to be a promising central midfield partnership of Boland and Ledley was broken up as Kav came in for the youngster. However, it was testimony to the impact made by the impressive Ledley that he did not drop put of the team but merely moved sideways to his preferred position on the left and it was Paul Parry who dropped to the bench. There was one other significant change to the team as well as injury forced Danny Gabbidon (who had been captaining the team in Kav’s absence) to miss his only game of the season with Tony Vidmar, rather than the fit again Robert Page, filling in for him.

Sunderland were one of three teams (Wigan and Ipswich being the others) who were breaking clear at the top of the table, but you would never have guessed it during a poor first half which City edged. Indeed, the visitors only looked dangerous when Tony Warner’s lack of ability with the ball at his feet (a persistent problem of his) almost presented them with goals. For twenty minutes of the second half, the same pattern continued with both teams more or less cancelling each other out, but then the visitors took control with two fine long range strikes in the space of ten minutes. The goals came from Dean Whitehead and one time City target Liam Lawrence who were both picked up on Bosmans from clubs in the basement during the summer. In each case, the age of the player meant that compensation had to be paid to their old clubs and, in their current predicament, that had probably put them out of City’s price range, but they offered evidence that the talent is around In the lower divisions if you can spot it - City are now in a position where their best chance of signing good new players would seem to be through the lower divisions where the wages we can now offer will still represent a decent increase for any player we make a move for.

Sunderland held on comfortably for a 2-0 win which probably put the triumph over Gillingham into some sort of perspective - the visitors had won without hitting any great heights, but they had that extra bit of quality that we lacked. This was our 23rd league game of the season and so represented the halfway point of the campaign, we had picked up just 22 points, scoring only 24 goals in the process and we had a kept a paltry four clean sheets defensively - it went without saying that a repeat of this form over the second half of the season would see us fall well short of safety.

The following week brought what the press had dubbed “the most important day in Cardiff City’s history” - Wednesday 15 December was the day of the council’s Planning Committee monthly meeting during which they would say yes or no to our application for planning permission for the various retail stores that would part finance the new ground. Although the indications beforehand were favourable, I was not going to believe anything until the applications had been passed and, as it turned out my caution turned out to be justified as it was announced just a few hours before the committee were due to sit that the decisions had been postponed until the next meeting on 19 January. “Legal and technical reasons” were given as to why this decision had been taken and the general opinion was that the problems that had been encountered were certainly not insurmountable, but, for me anyway, it was just another bad day in a season of almost unremitting gloom.

On the face of it, the team’s visit to Bramall Lane to face Sheffield United offered little prospect of the gloom hanging over the club being lifted. Neil Warnock’s team were occupying what has become their normal position over the past few years of in and around the play off areas and had a big money signing in Danny Cullip (one of 3,578 players we have been linked with at one time or another since Sam Hammam arrived!) making his debut at centre half.

However, Cullip, who had arrived from Brighton for around £400,000, spent most of the first half in a team that was put on to the back foot by a good City performance that may have had something to do with a change of tactics by Lennie Lawrence. All through the struggles of the season, our manager had stuck rigidly to his favoured 4-4-2 system with two wide players in midfield, but here (not before time most supporters would say!) was something different. Whilst it was still essentially 4-4-2 that the team played, the midfield had a diamond shape with Kav sitting in front of the back four, Boland and Ledley in the middle and Neil Harris making his full debut with a licence to attack playing just behind the front two.

For a long time it appeared that City would defy the odds and a referee who gave them virtually nothing (very unusually for him, Lennie Lawrence criticised Andre Marriner’s handling of the game afterwards) and snatch a surprise win. But for Marriner’s decision to disallow a Peter Thorne goal for some reason, City would already have been ahead when Neil Harris finished off a good passing movement with a fine angled drive after 41 minutes, but, straight from the kick off, the home side were offered a way back into the game when Kav clattered into Alan Quinn and was red carded for a second bookable offence.

Marriner got a long wrong in this game, but nobody could complain at Kav’s second dismissal in three matches because his challenge was reckless and irresponsible and had turned a game City were controlling pretty comfortably into a real backs to the wall struggle.

Inevitably, it was one way traffic in the second half, but, with the fit again Danny Gabbidon and James Collins in particular defending resolutely you were just beginning to think the City could hold on when Andy Liddell equalised from close range after 69 minutes. Ten minutes later Andy Gray bundled in a scrappy goal following a long throw and there was no way back for City after that as they headed home with nothing to show for an improved performance.

Neil Harris had shown with his goal that he could offer the team something and it appeared that City were angling to extend his loan deal for another month or two before making a final decision on whether to sign him or not, but in the week before Christmas supporters were surprised to learn that he had joined Nottingham Forest for what was described as a nominal fee! Apparently, Forest had offered a contract for a season and a half whereas City would only give the player a deal until the end of the season - it was a chastening experience for the club that only last summer had been blowing other teams offers out of the water, but in the event the whole affair probably worked out to our advantage as Harris spent most of his time on the bench for a Forest team that finished six points short of safety.

As one player left another came in with Japanese International midfield player Junichi Inamoto arriving on loan from West Brom. Inamoto had been a star of the 2002 World Cup which his country hosted along with South Korea so, on the face of it, it was reasonable to ask what on earth was he doing joining a club staring relegation into the Leagues third level in the face! The answer was that the player was making his way back from a broken leg he suffered in the summer and was well short of match fitness, this together with doubts I had (which in the event proved to be completely wide of the mark) about his attitude towards playing for us meant I was hardly ecstatic when I learned of his signing.

Inamoto (along with the fit again pair of Richard Langley and Stuart Fleetwood) was on the bench for the Boxing Day morning visit of a Wolves side that had found life in the Championship far tougher than anticipated following their relegation from the Premiership. The City team featured a couple of surprises as well with flu victim Darren Williams being replaced by Rhys Weston and Tony Vidmar filling in Kav’s absence through suspension in the defensive midfield role.

City’s performance never reached any great heights but they showed a lot of tenacity in defending a lead given to them after 17 minutes by Cameron Jerome when he collected Peter Thorne’s flick and scored via keeper Michael Oakes’ body. Wolves had plenty of possession, but, with City playing like an away team, they couldn’t find a way to break down the massed defence in front of them. A back injury to Joe Ledley which would keep him out for the best part of a month meant Richard Langley returned to first team action after more than four months out and he did his bit in preserving City’s lead until a moments loss of concentration when defending a corner enabled Kenny Miller to equalise after 75 minutes. There was no more scoring after that and, given Wolves’ dominance in terms of possession, a draw was probably a fair result - however, City had definitely created the better opportunities and would have won but for some fine saves by Oakes the last of which came in injury time when substitute Fleetwood created a chance for Inamoto (who looked way short of fitness in his brief time on the pitch) which the keeper just managed to block.

The games come thick and fast over the holiday period and it was only two days before the team were in action again at Watford with Inamoto in from the start in place of the injured Ledley. On the face of it, this looked like a desperate move by Lennie Lawrence because his latest signing looked way off the pace against Wolves and Lord only knows quite what the player, who was playing in a World Cup Quarter Final only eighteen months earlier, would have made of this desperate game played on awful pitch between two sides in terrible form!

City with Robert Page pressed into action after just 18 minutes for what turned out to be his last appearance for us when he came off the bench to replace the injured James Collins ground out a valuable 0-0 draw from an awful game of very few chances. Luck did appear to be on their side for a change when Jobi McAnuff got away with what appeared to a very strange diving handball in the box, but, apart from that, very little happened at either end as the team kept a very rare but nonetheless welcome clean sheet.